NEWS RELEASE
For More Information Contact: Robert Weissman (202) 387-8030
For Immediate Release: May 21st, 2007

Commercial Alert Letter to Jefferson County School Board Regarding Bus Radio

Commercial Alert
P.O. Box 19002
Washington, DC 20036

May 21, 2007

Dear [School Board Member],

I am writing from Commercial Alert, a non-profit organization that seeks to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy.

Tonight you will consider whether to offer up the children in your school system to predatory advertisers. I am writing to urge you to refuse to allow Bus Radio to deliver a captive audience of Jefferson County’s children to advertisers.

Any parent knows that our children are already assaulted by far too many commercial messages and influences. Schools cannot be a perfect haven from commercial pressures, but they should aspire to shield children as best they can. Certainly they should not be accessories to the commercial assault on kids.

Bus Radio likes to tout the notion that its offer of providing radio service for buses, and paying schools for the privilege of doing so, is a “win-win,” and some Jefferson County school officials have echoed this language.

This is a wholly deceptive sales pitch.

Bus Radio is not a social service organization. Its business model involves delivering captive and perfectly age-segmented markets to advertisers. Why would any school official want to be part of such exploitation of children?

Advertising in schools and school property like buses is so inappropriate that even a majority of marketing professionals believe it is wrong. A 2004 Harris poll of youth advertising and marketing professionals found that only 45 percent “feel that today’s young people can handle advertising in schools.” Forty-seven percent believe that “schools should be a protected area” and that “there should not be advertising to students on school grounds.”

This is not fundamentally an issue of whether the ads are age-appropriate from a parent’s point of view, though that itself is no small matter. Schools should be a place for education—to gain knowledge, to acquire a love of learning, to develop and discover one’s own unique personality, to learn how to build friendships and solve conflicts, to internalize community and civic values. Commercial intrusions—already all too present in kids’ lives—undermine virtually every aspect of the educational enterprise.

Every school board member wants to do what’s best for the kids in their district. Bus Radio is a wrong turn for children in Jefferson County, and everywhere else. I urge you to reject Bus Radio’s offer.

Sincerely,

Robert Weissman,
Managing Director,
Commercial Alert

Tel: 202-387-8030